First doré gold bar pour at DRDGOLD’s new Far West smelt house

This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation. The new elusion circuit and smelt house facility at DRDGOLD's Far West Gold Recoveries is performing to specification. "The initial capital estimate was met, and we came in on time and within budget," DRDGOLD CEO Niël Pretorius reported during a webinar in which DRDGOLD CFO Henriette Hooijer and DRDGOLD COO Jaco Schoeman also participated to provide an update on the progress of Vision 2028, DRDGOLD's five-project programme involving a capital expenditure of R10-billion. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.) The new facility was commissioned on Tuesday, July 14, when the first doré gold bar was poured. A doré bar is a semi-pure, unrefined alloy of gold produced directly at a mine site. Once fully ramped up, the new facility will increase monthly plant throughput to 1.2-million tons a month and contribute 16 years of mine life at that rate. Over the next few weeks – and in the months to follow before the rest of the Far West Gold Recoveries infrastructure is commissioned – the plan is to commence material processing and treating material at the new carbon-in-leach circuit, while concurrently conducting a full service of the existing circuit that has been in operation since 2018. Up to now, Far West Gold Recoveries personnel have had to send away their output without ever seeing its conversion to gold. But all that changed this week when a beaming plant manager held aloft gold what weighed just over 17 kg – and the appreciative workforce witnessed end product being produced before their eyes. "It was a good event for us," an upbeat Pretorius remarked during the webinar covered by Mining Weekly. After the smelt, the gold bar was whisked away by helicopter, roughly four minutes after the above picture was taken, which is the nature of the gold transportation logistics being deployed. The helipad next to the smelt house is also fully walled, which means that security, logistics and the flow of material played a big part in the facility's design and construction. Four years ago, DRDGOLD, as part of its ongoing commitment to optimising its portfolio of assets, initiated a capital investment programme aimed at structurally reconfiguring the cost provide of the cost profile of Ergo, the gold-from-waste operation on Gauteng's East Rand, and developing the infrastructure required to extend its life of mine, while increasing both throughput and production capacity. It was a two-part programme, the first involving the construction of a 60 MW solar plant and a 187 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) at Ergo. Construction started in financial year (FY) 2022 and the project was commissioned in FY 2025. This investment has fundamentally reset Ergo's cost profile, strengthening energy security, reducing its carbon footprint, and demonstrating how investment in strategic infrastructure can improve both operational resilience and financial performance. Currently, the solar and BESS plant supplies around 47% of Ergo's electricity requirements for around 12 hours a day. The second part, the R10-billion capital infrastructure investment programme involving the five projects, was aimed at establishing tailings storage and plant throughput capacity capable of lifting combined throughput from the company's two operations, Ergo and Far West Gold Recoveries from around 2.15-million tonnes a month to three-million tonnes a month and grow annual gold production to six tonnes by 2028, the programme dubbed Vision 2028, on which construction started in FY 2024. Now, that vision is being realised with its first major milestone being the resumption of deposition on to the Daggafontein tailings storage facility (TSF). On June 25, water was first pumped to the facility and the first deposition of tailings followed on Jul...